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4The birth of sense: generative passivity in Merleau-Ponty's philosophyOhio University Press. 2018.In The Birth of Sense, Don Beith proposes a new concept of generative passivity, the idea that our organic, psychological, and social activities take time to develop into sense. More than being a limit, passivity marks out the way in which organisms, persons, and interbodily systems take time in order to manifest a coherent sense. Beith situates his argument within contemporary debates about evolution, developmental biology, scientific causal explanations, psychology, postmodernism, social const…Read more
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16From Biomimicry to BiosophiaEnvironmental Philosophy 18 (2): 259-278. 2021.Biomimicry promises great progress in ecological design. Advocates, hinging on the work of Janine Benyus, argue that biomimicry enhances sustainable technologies. This essay suggests conceptual and ethical improvements to biomimicry: first by considering Michael Fisch’s concept of bioinspiration through studying Neri Oxman’s Silkworm Pavilion and second, through the articulation of a new concept of biosophia, drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s late Institution and Nature lectures. His investigat…Read more
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Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology of Inter-Corporeal Selfhood. An Encounter with Scott L. Marrato, "The Incorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity"Phaenex: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture 10. 2015.
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4Merleau-Ponty and the Institution of Animate Form: The Generative Origins of Animal Perception and MovementChiasmi International 15 201-218. 2013.From his earliest work in The Structure of Behavior, Maurice Merleau-Ponty abrogates accounts of organic form that posit the organism as either passively ordered by the environment which precedes it, or as actively constituting its environment. I argue that Merleau-Ponty first develops what I term a genetic concept of form, in which the organism-environment relationship unfolds developmentally. This account of genetic form, however, requires a further concept of generative form to overcome the c…Read more
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62The Sense of Space (review)Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale 11 (1): 183-187. 2007.
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22Merleau-Ponty and the Institution of Animate Form: The Generative Origins of Animal Perception and MovementChiasmi International 15 201-218. 2013.From his earliest work in The Structure of Behavior, Maurice Merleau-Ponty abrogates accounts of organic form that posit the organism as either passively ordered by the environment which precedes it, or as actively constituting its environment. I argue that Merleau-Ponty first develops what I term a genetic concept of form, in which the organism-environment relationship unfolds developmentally. This account of genetic form, however, requires a further concept of generative form to overcome the c…Read more
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The Birth of Sense: Generative Passivity in Merleau-Ponty's PhilosophyOhio University Press. 2018.In The Birth of Sense, Don Beith proposes a new concept of generative passivity, the idea that our organic, psychological, and social activities take time to develop into sense. More than being a limit, passivity marks out the way in which organisms, persons, and interbodily systems take time in order to manifest a coherent sense. Beith situates his argument within contemporary debates about evolution, developmental biology, scientific causal explanations, psychology, postmodernism, social const…Read more
Orono, Maine, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Environmental Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Phenomenology |
Areas of Interest
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